How Firm a Foundation -Tested, and Funny Pregnacy Story

So just a few quick things:

1- Primary went really well. I was worried about using SO MANY words (see my post about ‘How Firm a Foundation) with the little children. But they picked up on the song so quickly. Much more quickly than they did for ‘I Lived in Heaven’. Because I was more worried about the words I wanted to first make sure they had a firm grip on the tune. I hadn’t spent much time in the past learning the tune first. I had always had them listen to it once through with just the piano, but then we’d try singing it. This time we listened, then we hummed it, and then we la la laaed our way through it. I think this helped. Even if it didn’t help they learn it, I would still call it a success because the children seemed to really enjoying trying to la the song.

2- The only also really went well with the activity around the first verse. We didn’t do this part with the JR primary because we ran out of time, (I took a lot of time reviewing ‘I Lived in Heaven’ before we started learning ‘How Firm a Foundation’). With SR primary, after we had learned all the words, we started turning over the bricks to hide some of the words (this is where we’ll start with JR primary after a quick review). I had 4 children come up at a time, pick a brick, flip it over, and then return to their seat. Since there are a lot of words and there are only a word or two on each brick there were a lot to flip over. We sing the verse trying to remember those words and then I’d have 4 more children come up and then we’d sing it again. It made for a good 4 more times singing the song. WARNING: I love getting children involved. I think they enjoy it more and I think they behave more. But since there were so many bricks to flip, there were only a few children who never got a turn to come up. This is bad because those who didn’t get to come up felt left out and I even had one brake down and cry (remember this was my SR Primary). Just keep that in mind if you are going to do this activity, it can be done as an activity to learn the verse or as an activity for the activity Sunday

3- This was just funny pregnancy stuff: I try to do a wiggle song to transition over to Sharing Time. The song we decided on was ‘Do as I’m Doing’, the action chosen by the child who came up to be the leader was ‘head shoulders knees and toes’. I thought this was going to be fun (although at first it confused my pianist, she wasn’t sure which song we were going to sing). Well, as many of you know I am 25 weeks pregnant, and defiantly showing. As we began singing and doing the motions of head shoulders knees and oh my goodness I can’t really do toes anymore. Each time I went down was something special. Next time we sing either ‘Do as I’m Doing’ or ‘Head Shoulders Kneed and Toes’ I will have to only sing. I’m too pregnant for that anymore.

Have a great week everyone. We had lots of fun today with ‘How Firm a Foundation’, I think it will be one of the memorable ones of the year.